Tesla recently filed a $1 billion lawsuit against a former supplier, Matthews International, alleging trade secret theft of its EV battery technology. Matthews has been supplying Tesla with machinery since 2019, and the company says it has been been swiping trade secrets related to dry electrode battery manufacturing. Tesla got those secrets by acquiring a company called Maxwell Technologies back in 2018.

Disney’s “real” lightsaber wowed us with a glowing blade that extended and retracted, but since it refuses to sell it to Star Wars fans, the YouTube channel HeroTech made its own using LED strips, motors, and a magician’s cane. The effect is convincing, and if you’ve got the engineering skills you can even buy the plans to build your own.

LG’s new entry-level OLED TV, the B4, has started shipping. Starting at $1,699, it provides the core OLED benefits like perfect blacks and 120Hz gaming performance. But you’d be better off hunting down a deal on last year’s C3 while there’s still supply.

Splurging a little more on the C4 or G4 gets you better brightness, plus other bells and whistles.

John Giannandrea, Apple’s AI chief, speaking at John Gruber’s The Talk Show Live from WWDC 2024:

The inference of large language models is incredibly computationally expensive. So it’s a combination of bandwidth in the device, it’s the size of the ANE [Apple Neural Engine], it’s the oomph in the device to actually do these models fast enough to be useful.

You could in theory run these models on a very old device. but it would be so slow it would not be useful.

Greg Joswiak, Apple’s marketing boss, also pushed back on the idea that Apple Intelligence is a scheme to sell new iPhones. “Otherwise, we would have been smart enough just to do recent iPads and Macs, too.”

David Pierce journeyed to Sin City (or is it Sphere City now?) to witness the Microsoft Excel World Championship. Among the planet’s best spreadsheet makers, he discovered one truth: if you can manipulate Excel like a pro, you become a god among humans.

For months, players have struggled to resolve the “high rent” notification popping up inside their cities. But now, developers say they fixed the issue by eliminating “virtual landlords,” who’ve apparently been driving up prices behind the scenes. Instead, rent is now equally paid by all renters, and they’ll automatically move out if it gets too high.

NASA has pushed back the capsule’s return to Earth from the ISS to examine helium leaks and a valve issue. The Starliner ran into multiple delays before finally launching earlier this month.

The agency is targeting a return “no earlier than” June 22nd, and plans to hold a teleconference at 12PM ET on June 18th to talk over details of the delayed departure.

Called the Logitech MX Ink, it will work on the Quest 2 and Quest 3, and can be used to draw in 2D on surfaces or 3D using “full 6DoF positional tracking,” according to UploadVR.

The MX Ink will have haptic feedback, pressure sensitivity, multiple buttons, and will support a double tap feature. Users will reportedly be able to seamlessly switch between it and Quest Touch controllers.

Previously an experimental feature, WebXR support is on by default for Vision Pro beta testers, RoadtoVR wrote last week. The open standard allows for VR and AR experiences on the web, such as those listed on this GitHub page.

However, the outlet writes that AR experiences do not seem to work quite yet, limiting it to fully-VR ones for now.

As seen in MacRumors, iOS 18 beta testers can set a new Siri wake word using Vocal Shortcuts, a new accessibility feature. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Vocal Shortcuts > Set Up Vocal Shortcuts, then find and tap “Siri” to try it.

It won’t work with HomePods. And your iPhone won’t acknowledge it unless you pause after saying the word. That’s good; otherwise, you learn just how frequently you say a word like “computer.”

NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick, who’s been on the International Space Station since March, seems to enjoy sharing his camera settings. For the picture of the Boeing Starliner below, he followed up:

For the photography nerds: 1 second exposure, f 1.4, ISO 2000, 24 mm lens.

Posts on the Cybertruck Owners Forum, Reddit, and on X say that Tesla has notified them their Cybertruck deliveries are being pushed back. Some say they were told it was a wiper blade issue, while others say they weren’t given a reason.

The reports come just two months after the company recalled all Cybertrucks over stuck accelerator pedals. Tesla didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment.

I think most people will be worthy, considering how easy it is to unlock this lock shaped like the MCU version of Thor’s hammer.

Truth be told, I’d still find something to use it for.

Apple’s long-included macOS Chess game has a new look in the first macOS Sequoia beta.

Shiny as it is, it’s missing things like the “Grass” board and the style picker for the pieces, 9to5Mac writes. Here’s the current version (using “Fur” pieces on the Grass board, of course) compared to a screenshot posted to Reddit of its coming replacement.

So Jon Stewart said of TV network deals while talking to Matt Belloni on his The Town podcast about his split from Apple TV Plus.

9to5Mac highlighted some of his statements, like that he didn’t view Apple limiting his show’s content as censorship. Head to the link below to hear the whole interview.

The Siri face no longer exists, at least in the watchOS 11 developer beta, according to AppleInsider. If it’s gone in the release version this fall, that may be the first watchface ever retired, the story notes.

The Siri face debuted with the Apple Watch series 3. Its big idea was that it would surface info as you need it, but new Smart Stack features may make it redundant.

According to the proposed settlement (via Reuters), Clearview would give away nearly a quarter of the company — either paying out 23 percent of its value, or 17 percent of its revenue. The NYT reports Clearview is only valued at $225 million, though, so I’d be surprised if I even see a quarter dollar from this one.

The NHS has now revealed the scope of the damage following the June 3rd cyberattack. In addition to the operations, over 800 outpatient appointments were canceled, and 18 organ transplants were diverted.

“The cyber-attack has had a significant impact on our services, and this is likely to remain the case for some time yet,” say hospital execs.